BROOKLYN MOTTO

In Johnson’s crime novel set in the late 1990s, an inexperienced private eye in New York City unexpectedly gets mixed up in multiple murders.

It’s 1998, and 20-something Nico Kelly is a licensed PI who does mundane work for a lawyer named Finch, shadowing city employees suspected of committing insurance fraud. Specifically, he surveils supposedly injured workers, trying to catch them performing suspiciously vigorous activities. Nico’s personal life is also dismal. His father, once an “open-mic popular” musician, died of an overdose a few years ago, and he’s lost contact with his Ecuadorian mother, although he still sees his aunt, Cookie. Everything changes when Nico, on a routine job, gets videotaped footage of a cop’s murder by two fellow officers. Finch suggests giving the VHS tape to a former member of a police-corruption committee. After another murder, the officer assigned to the case, Detective Hong, looks at them as suicides, but Nico isn’t convinced—especially after his video camera is stolen from his apartment. Next, someone close to Cookie dies under strange circumstances, and she begs Nico to find out what happened. Now he’s doing “real PI shit,” including breaking into buildings and creating a fake identity, but his investigation may not yield the answers he wants. Johnson ably gives his story a vivid sense of atmosphere. Nico’s world is gritty but cool, populated with establishments like the Doray, a tavern with a black interior and exterior; the 24-hour record shop Accidental Records; and “self-aware” bar Max Fish, all sharing space with ever-present rats, cockroaches, and garbage; characters eat New York staples such as pizza and bialys. Johnson skillfully imbues it all with a clear sense of the time, when Rudy Guiliani was New York’s mayor; one character is convinced a Y2K computer meltdown is imminent, and Nico uses old tech like pagers and pay phones. Although the story centers on a navigation of societal corruption, the witty dialogue throughout and underachiever Nico’s wry narration (“I sort of got shot”) counteract the darkness, ultimately giving readers a cautious sense of hope.  

An often humorous mystery that winningly portrays a very particular time and place.